Monday, 14 December 2009

Top lawyer damns Blair as Bush sycophant over war

Today's Times carries a powerful article by Sir Ken Macdonald, director of public prosecutions between 2003 and 2008, that says Blair was drunk on power when it came to dragging us into the Iraq war, engaging in "an alarming subterfuge with his partner George Bush" and going on to "mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn’t want".

"In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so. Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'. But this is a narcissist's defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death."

But he warns that the Chilcot inquiry may turn out to be a whitewash.

"In British public life, loyalty and service to power can sometimes count for more to insiders than any tricky questions of wider reputation. It's the regard you are held in by your peers that really counts, so that steadfastness in the face of attack and threatened exposure brings its own rich hierarchy of honour and reward."

We all knew Blair had a weak character. Why couldn't his own party see it?

Reaching for my Gnu

Featured post

UPDATED October 2016 This is about trust. It is about ethics. It is about where we are all headed as a society and what sort of a world w...

The Steampunk Opium Wars

Anna May Wong Must Die!

Anna Chen's one-woman show

What They Said

"One thing stands out above all from this blog: the excellence of Madam Miaow's writing. Her commentary is consistently strong, especially on Chinese cultural and political issues, and unsurprisingly - given her comedic background - the sense of humour is top-class. We really enjoy reading this blog not because of its political insight - but simply because it's really, really good." Politics.co.uk